Connect WhatsApp to Zoho Bigin: New Contacts and Deals, Automatically

Automate AI’s Zoho Bigin integration sends each new WhatsApp contact to Bigin within a few minutes, links people Bigin already knows instead of adding them twice, and can open a deal that moves stage whenever your team changes the contact’s status in the inbox.

It suits teams that talk to customers on WhatsApp but run their pipeline in Bigin: salespeople keep working in chats, and the pipeline stays current without anyone retyping names and numbers. This guide explains what is sent, how to map statuses to stages, how to set it up and what to check when something doesn’t arrive.

What gets sent to Bigin

Bigin needs a last name, so a contact with only a first name is sent with that name as the last name, and a contact with no name at all is sent under their phone number.

What isn’t sent: chat messages, notes and tags; contacts added before you connected or while sending was switched off; and stage changes for contacts that have no deal. Nothing flows back from Bigin to Automate AI.

Plan the pipeline before you connect

In Bigin, a Team Pipeline holds one business process such as sales, sub-pipelines split it when part of the process needs its own stages, and stages are the steps a record moves through. Decide three things first:

1. Which pipeline and sub-pipeline WhatsApp leads belong in, for example a sub-pipeline called “WhatsApp enquiries”.
2. The starting stage for every new WhatsApp contact.
3. Which statuses move the deal. Use the statuses your team already sets in the inbox, and leave the rest on “Don’t move the deal”.

Example mapping (sample data)

The stage names here are examples. The setup screen loads your own pipelines, sub-pipelines and stages from Bigin. If a new contact already has a mapped status when it is sent, its deal opens at that status’s stage instead of the starting stage.

One place to update: the status in the chat

Because the sync runs one way, the status in Automate AI is what moves the deal. Agree on a routine with the team:

• Salespeople change the status in the chat, with a short note, right after a call or visit. The deal follows within minutes.
• Moving a deal by hand in Bigin doesn’t change the WhatsApp status, so the two can drift apart. If someone does, they should update the status too.
• Re-inquiries are a cue. When a lead your team had moved on writes again, the chat is marked Re-inquiry, a reminder to update the status, and with it the deal.
• Keep statuses few and clear. Six well-understood statuses map cleanly; twenty overlapping ones don’t.

For statuses, reminders and lead scoring on the WhatsApp side, see WhatsApp CRM and the shared inbox.

Set it up in Automate AI, step by step

1. Go to Integrations › Zoho Bigin and click Connect with Zoho Bigin. Sign in to Zoho and allow access. The connection uses your Zoho account’s own data centre, such as zoho.in for India.
2. Back in Automate AI, the card shows your Bigin organisation, email and data centre. Under What to send, switch on Send new contacts to Bigin.
3. To open deals, switch on Also open a deal for each new contact, then choose the Pipeline, Sub-pipeline and Starting stage.
4. Under Status → stage, pick a stage for each status that should move the deal, or leave it on “Don’t move the deal”.
5. Click Save. Add a test contact with your own number, wait a few minutes, and check both Bigin and the activity list.

Only the account owner or a manager can connect Bigin, change these settings or see the activity list; other team members can’t change anything here.

Read the activity list

Below the settings, the activity list shows what happened to each contact: sent, matched to an existing Bigin contact, deal opened, deal moved, or failed with Bigin’s reason. The card above it counts contacts sent and shows when the app last checked.

• Sending is gentle. New contacts go to Bigin in small batches, so a large import takes a while to arrive.
• Bigin’s API limits. If Bigin’s daily API limit is reached, sending pauses and carries on by itself later.
• Login problems. If Zoho refuses the login twice in a row, the card asks you to Connect again.
• One record refused. If Bigin rejects one contact’s data, that contact is skipped and listed; the others carry on.

How matching avoids duplicates

Before creating anything, Automate AI searches Bigin for the contact’s phone number, comparing the last 10 digits of the Mobile and Phone fields, and then for the email address. A match is linked instead of added. Each Automate AI contact is linked to one Bigin contact and sent once, and if that person already has a deal in the chosen pipeline, the deal is kept instead of a second one being opened.

• Because only the last 10 digits are compared, “+91 98XXX XXXXX” and “098XXXXXXXX” count as the same number.
• Clean up obvious duplicates inside Bigin before you connect; the integration links to the first match it finds.
• Ask the team to save email addresses when customers share them: email is the second way a match is found.

Privacy, consent and disconnecting

• Only what’s needed is shared: names, mobile number and email go to Bigin. Conversations stay in Automate AI.
• Consent still applies. Having someone in a CRM doesn’t mean they agreed to WhatsApp messages. WhatsApp requires opt-in that names your business, and you must honour every request to stop. See WhatsApp opt-in.
• Disconnect: click Disconnect on the card. Contacts stop being sent and the saved Zoho login is removed; everything already in Bigin stays there.

Keeping lists in a spreadsheet instead? See Connect WhatsApp to Google Sheets. Capturing leads from ads? See Facebook Lead Ads to WhatsApp.